Installation

This tutorial assumes that Python and virtualenv are already installed
and working in your system. If you need help setting this up, you should
refer to the chapters on :ref:`installing_chapter`.

Preparation

Please take the following steps to prepare for the tutorial. The
steps are slightly different depending on whether you're using UNIX or
Windows.

Preparation, UNIX

Install SQLite3 and its development packages if you don't already
have them installed. Usually this is via your system's package
manager. For example, on a Debian Linux system, do sudo apt-get
install libsqlite3-dev.

Use your Python's virtualenv to make a workspace:

$ path/to/my/Python-2.6/bin/virtualenv --no-site-packages pyramidtut

Switch to the pyramidtut directory:

$ cd pyramidtut

Use easy_install to get :app:`Pyramid` and its direct
dependencies installed:

$ bin/easy_install pyramid

Preparation, Windows

Use your Python's virtualenv to make a workspace:

c:\> c:\Python26\Scripts\virtualenv --no-site-packages pyramidtut

Switch to the pyramidtut directory:

c:\> cd pyramidtut

Use easy_install to get :app:`Pyramid` and its direct
dependencies installed:

The below instructions assume your current working directory is the
"virtualenv" named "pyramidtut".

On UNIX:

$ bin/pcreate -s alchemy tutorial

On Windows:

c:\pyramidtut> Scripts\pcreate -s alchemy tutorial

Note

If you are using Windows, the alchemy
scaffold may not deal gracefully with installation into a
location that contains spaces in the path. If you experience
startup problems, try putting both the virtualenv and the project
into directories that do not contain spaces in their paths.

Success executing this command will end with a line to the console something
like:

Please run the "populate_tutorial" script to set up the SQL
database before starting the application (e.g.
"$myvirtualenv/bin/populate_tutorial development.ini".)

Installing the Project in "Development Mode"

In order to do development on the project easily, you must "register"
the project as a development egg in your workspace using the
setup.py develop command. In order to do so, cd to the "tutorial"
directory you created in :ref:`sql_making_a_project`, and run the
"setup.py develop" command using virtualenv Python interpreter.

Exposing Test Coverage Information

You can run the nosetests command to see test coverage
information. This runs the tests in the same way that setup.py
test does but provides additional "coverage" information, exposing
which lines of your project are "covered" (or not covered) by the
tests.

To get this functionality working, we'll need to install a couple of
other packages into our virtualenv: nose and coverage:

On UNIX:

$ ../bin/easy_install nose coverage

On Windows:

c:\pyramidtut\tutorial> ..\Scripts\easy_install nose coverage

Once nose and coverage are installed, we can actually run the
coverage tests.

This happens because we haven't populated the SQL database with any table
information yet. We need to use the populate_tutorial:term:`console
script` to populate our database before we can see the page render correctly.

Stop the running Pyramid application by pressing ctrl-C in the console.
Make sure you're still in the tutorial directory (the directory with a
development.ini in it) and type the following command:

Success! You should now have a tutorial.db file in your current working
directory. This will be a SQLite database with a single table defined in it
(models).

Starting the Application (Again)

Start the application again.

On UNIX:

$ ../bin/pserve development.ini --reload

On Windows:

c:\pyramidtut\tutorial> ..\Scripts\pserve development.ini --reload

At this point, when you visit http://localhost:6543/ in your web browser,
you will no longer see an error; instead you will see the generated
application's default page.

One thing you'll notice is the "debug toolbar" icon on right hand side of the
page. You can read more about the purpose of the icon at
:ref:`debug_toolbar`. It allows you to get information about your
application while you develop.

Decisions the alchemy Scaffold Has Made For You

Creating a project using the alchemy scaffold makes
the following assumptions:

:app:`Pyramid` supports any persistent storage mechanism (e.g. object
database or filesystem files, etc). It also supports an additional
mechanism to map URLs to code (:term:`traversal`). However, for the
purposes of this tutorial, we'll only be using url dispatch and
SQLAlchemy.